Hyderabad: An MBA student who acts in short films, and his unemployed friend, who were getting a kick out of trolling and harassing users of the TikTok mobile application were arrested by the Cyberabad cyber crime police on Thursday.
The accused were targeting netizens to get fame and were enjoying it by discussing the same on WhatsApp groups, the probe revealed.
Nimesh Chowdary, 30, is doing an MBA in Human Resources and acts in short films. He hails from Anantapur in Andhra Pradesh.
Aravind Patel, 21, from Metpally in Karimnagar district of Telangana state is unemployed.
They were arrested after Janardhan Devella, a resident of the Kukatpally Housing Board Colony, complained that he and his friends, including some women, were targeted and harassed by the duo on TikTok.
The Cyberabad police who probed the case found that Nimesh, also supervises his father’s hotel. He has been acting in some short films made by his friends at Anantapur. He has around 32,700 followers on TikTok and has been trolling other users. A few months ago, Nimesh and Aravind Patel became friends through the mobile app. Both of them got together and created two WhatsApp groups, who support the acts of Nimesh.
The groups are named ‘Lover Boy’ and ‘Nimesh Chowdary Brothers’. Aravind is the administrator of both groups containing at least 100 members.
According to the police, Nimesh wanted to earn some fame for himself, and thought he could do so by trolling other users and commenting vulgarly about them by making videos.
Those who liked his comments started following him and Aravind was one such person.
The two would discuss every day who to target and Nimesh would make a video with vulgar comments and tag the targetted user.
His supporters on WhatsApp groups also trolled the targetted users’ TikTok profile, and harassed them, the official said.
“There are a few who suffered mental agony due to the harassment of Nimesh and his aides. He and the admin of the WhatsApp groups, Aravind, have been arrested and remanded,” said a police official.
